American Adventures Part 39

Then, after a much longer pause: "Well, ma'am, you see, in a game of lawn tennis everybody owns their own racquet."

At this juncture a tall, thin man in what is known (excepting at Palm Beach) as a "Palm Beach suit," entered the shop and the clerk asked his inquisitor to hold the wire while he made some inquiries. After a long conversation with the new arrival he returned to the telephone and resumed his explanation.

"Well, you see, they have a net, and one stands on one side and one on the other--yes, ma'am, there _can_ be two on each side--and one serves.

What? Yes, he hits the ball over the net, and it has to go in the opposite court on the other side, and then if that one doesn't send it back--Yes, the court is marked with lines--why, that counts fifteen. The next count is thirty. What? No, ma'am, I don't know why they count that way. No, it's just the way they do in lawn tennis. If your opponent has nothing, why, they call that 'love.' Yes, that's it--l-o-v-e--just the same as when anybody's _in_ love. No, ma'am, I don't know why.... So that's the way they count.

"No, ma'am, the lines are boundaries. You have to stand in a certain place and hit the ball in a certain place.... No, I don't mean that way.

You've got to hit it so it _lands_ in a certain place; and the one that's playing against you has to hit it back in a certain place, and if it goes in some _other_ place, then you can't play it any more. Oh, no!

Not all day. I mean that ends _that_ part, and you start over. You just keep on doing like that."

But though it was apparent that he considered his explanation complete, the lady at the other end of the wire was evidently not yet satisfied, and as he began to struggle with more questions we left the shop and went to the Gilmer Hotel to see if any mail had come for us.

The Gilmer was built by slave labor some years before the war, and was in its day considered a very handsome edifice. Nor is it to-day an unsatisfactory hotel for a town of the size of Columbus. Its old brick walls are st.u.r.dy, and its rooms are of a fine s.p.a.ciousness. Downstairs it has been somewhat remodeled, but the large parlor on the second floor is much as it was in the beginning, even to the great mirrors and the carved furniture imported more than sixty years ago from France. Most of the doors still have the old locks, and the window cords originally installed were of such a quality that they have not had to be renewed.

The Gilmer was still new when the Battle of s.h.i.+loh was fought, and several thousand of the wounded were brought to Columbus. The hotel and various other buildings, including that of the former Female Inst.i.tute, were converted into hospitals, as were also many private houses in the town.

Though there was never fighting at Columbus, the end of the war found some fifteen hundred soldiers' graves in Friends.h.i.+p Cemetery, perhaps twoscore of the number being those of Federals. The citizens were, at this time, too poor and too broken in spirit to erect memorials, but several ladies of Columbus made it their custom to visit the cemetery and care for the graves of the Confederate dead. This movement, started by individuals--Miss Matt Moreton, Mrs. J.T. Fontaine, and Mrs. Green T.

Hill--was soon taken up by other ladies of the place and resulted in a determination to make the decoration of soldiers' graves an annual occurrence.

In an old copy of the "Mississippi Index," published at the time, may be found an account of the solemn march of the women, young and old, to the cemetery, on April 25, 1866--one year after Robert E. Lee's surrender--and of the decoration of the graves not only of Confederate but of Federal soldiers. It is the proud boast of Columbus that this occasion const.i.tuted the first celebration of the now national Decoration Day--or, as it is more properly called, Memorial Day.

It should perhaps be said here that Columbus, Georgia, disputes the claim of Columbus, Mississippi, as to Memorial Day. In the Georgia city it is contended that the idea of decorating soldiers' graves originated with Miss Lizzie Rutherford, later Mrs. Roswell Ellis, of that place.

The inscription of Mrs. Ellis' monument in Linwood Cemetery, Columbus, Georgia, states that the idea of Memorial Day originated with her.

It seems clear, however, that the same idea occurred to women in both cities simultaneously, and that, while the actual celebration of the day occurred in Columbus, Mississippi, one day earlier than in Columbus, Georgia, the ladies of the latter city may have been first in suggesting that Memorial Day be not a local celebration, but one in which the whole South should take part.

The incident of the first decoration of the graves of Union as well as Confederate soldiers appears, however, to belong entirely to Columbus, Mississippi, and it is certain that this exhibition of magnanimity inspired F.W. Finch to write the famous poem, "The Blue and the Gray,"

for when that poem was first published in the "Atlantic Monthly" for September, 1867, it carried the following headnote:

The women of Columbus, Miss., animated by n.o.ble sentiments, have shown themselves impartial in their offerings to the memory of the dead. They strewed flowers on the graves of the Confederate and of the National soldiers.

This episode becomes the more touching by reason of the fact that the Columbus lady who initiated the movement to place flowers on the Union graves, at a time when such action was sure to provoke much criticism in the South, was Mrs. Augusta Murdock Sykes, herself the widow of a Confederate soldier.

So with an equal splendor The morning sun rays fall, With a touch impartially tender On the blossoms blooming for all; Under the sod and the dew, Waiting the Judgment Day; Broidered with gold the Blue; Mellowed with gold the Gray.

CHAPTER XLIII

OUT OF THE LONG AGO

While local historians attempt to tangle up the exploration of De Soto with the early history of this region, saying that De Soto "entered the State of Mississippi near the site of Columbus," and that "he probably crossed the Tombigbee River at this point," their conclusions are largely the result of guesswork. But it is not guesswork to say that when the Kentucky and Tennessee volunteers, going to the aid of Andrew Jackson, at New Orleans, in 1814, cut a military road from Tusc.u.mbia, Alabama, to the Gulf, they pa.s.sed over the site of Columbus, for the road they cut remains to-day one of the princ.i.p.al highways of the district as well as one of the chief streets of the town.

More clearly defined, of course, are memories of the Civil War and of Reconstruction, for there are many present-day residents of Columbus who remember both. Among these is one of those wonderful, sweet, high-spirited, and altogether fascinating ladies whom we call old only because their hair is white and because a number of years have pa.s.sed over their heads--one of those glorious young old ladies in which the South is, I think, richer than any other single section of the world.

It was our good fortune to meet Mrs. John Billups, and to see some of her treasured relics--among them the flag carried through the battles of Monterey and Buena Vista by the First Mississippi Regiment, of which Jefferson Davis was colonel, and in which her husband was a lieutenant; and a crutch used by General Nathan Bedford Forrest when he was housed at the Billups residence in Columbus, recovering from a wound. But better yet it was to hear Mrs. Billups herself tell of the times when the house in which she lived as a young woman, at Holly Springs, Mississippi, was used as headquarters by General Grant.

Mrs. Billups, who was a Miss Govan, was educated in Philadelphia and Wilmington, and had many friends and relatives in the North. Her mother was Mrs. Mary Govan of Holly Springs, and her brother's wife, who resided with the Govans during the war, was a Miss Hawkes, a daughter of the Rev. Francis L. Hawkes, then rector of St. Thomas's Church in New York. All were, however, good Confederates.

Mrs. Govan's house at Holly Springs was being used as a hospital when Grant and his army marched, unresisted, into the town, and Mrs. Govan, with her daughters and daughter-in-law, had already moved to the residence of Colonel Harvey Walter, which is to this day a show place, and is now the residence of Mr. and Mrs. Oscar Johnson of St.

Louis--Mrs. Johnson being Colonel Walter's daughter.

This house was selected by Grant as his headquarters, and he resided there for a considerable period. ("It seemed a mighty long time," says Mrs. Billups.) With the general was Mrs. Grant and their son Jesse, as well as Mrs. Grant's negro maid, Julia, who, Mrs. Grant told Mrs.

Billups, had been given to her, as a slave, by her father, Colonel Dent.

Mrs. Billups was under the impression that Julia was, at that time, still a slave. At all events, she was treated as a slave.

"We all liked the Grants," Mrs. Billups said. "He had very little to say, but she was very sociable and used to come in and sit with us a great deal.

"One day the general took his family and part of his army and went to Oxford, Mississippi, leaving Colonel Murphy in command at Holly Springs.

While Grant was away our Confederate General Van Dorn made a raid on Holly Springs, capturing the town, tearing up the railroad, and destroying the supplies of the Northern army. He just dashed in, did his work, and dashed out again.

"Some of his men came to the house and, knowing that it was Grant's headquarters, wished to make a search. My mother was entirely willing they should do so, but she knew that there were no papers in the house, and a.s.sured the soldiers that if they did search they would find nothing but Mrs. Grant's personal apparel--which she was sure they would not wish to disturb.

"That satisfied them and they went away.

"Next morning back came Grant with his army. He rode up on horseback, preceded by his bodyguard, and I remember that he looked worn and worried.

"As he dismounted he saw my sister-in-law, Mrs. Eaton Pugh Govan--the one who was Miss Hawkes--standing on the gallery above.

"He called up to her and said: 'Mrs. Govan, I suppose my sword is gone?'

"'What sword, General?' she asked him.

"'The sword that was presented to me by the army. I left it in my wife's closet.'

"Mrs. Govan was thunderstruck.

"'I didn't know it was there,' she said. 'Oh! I should have been tempted to send it to General Van Dorn if I had known that it was there!'

"The next morning, as a reward to us for not having known that his sword was there, the general gave us a protection paper explicitly forbidding soldiers to enter the house."

Of course the Govans, like all other citizens of invaded districts in the South, buried their family plate before the "Yankees" came.

Shortly after this had been accomplished--as they thought, secretly--the Govans were preparing to entertain friends at dinner when a negro boy who helped about the dining-room remarked innocently, in the presence of Mrs. Govan and several of her servants:

"Missus ain't gwine to have no fine table to-night, caze all de silvuh's done buried in de strawbe'y patch."

He had seen the old gardener "planting" the plate.

Thereafter it was quietly decided in the family that the negroes had better know nothing about the location of buried treasure. That night, therefore, some gentlemen went out to the strawberry patch, disinterred the silver, carried it to Colonel Walter's place, and there buried it under the front walk.

"And after Grant came," said Mrs. Billups, "we used to laugh as we watched the Union sentries marching up and down that walk, right over our plate."

Among the items not already mentioned, of which Columbus is proud, are the facts that she has supplied two cabinet members within the past decade--J.M. d.i.c.kinson, Taft's Secretary of War, and T.W. Gregory, Wilson's Attorney General--and that J. Gano Johnson, breeder of famous American saddle horses, has recently come from Kentucky and established his Emerald Chief Stock Farm in Lowndes County, a short distance from the town.